Having actually read his article, long-winded and glowing as it was, there was only a small part on the first page and second page that he didn’t write himself. If he bought a chair and wrote a review about it, who cares? It just seems like you are making a lot out of nothing by complaining he didn’t notify the world of his changes. At least he made them, right?

What I care about is his dishonesty. He absolutely provably lied about whether the press-release paragraphs were flagged as such – apparently too stupid to realise that the internet keeps track of these things – when all he had to do was say “Oops, yes, that was a mistake, sorry”, rather than trying to cover it up while ranting furiously about “dim-witted internet trolls” and making groundless allegations about “threats”.

(Even now we’re expressly being told that things like the bullet-point list of features including “Creates harmony between people and computers” are Benchmark Reviews’ own work, NOT something taken off a Herman Miller press release. It’s not in italics, after all, and it appears after the bits identified as being Herman Miller-sourced.)

And he certainly seems to be lying about the rest of the review being his own work, given that most of it appears in almost identical form on the Smart Furniture website and they claim ownership of it, while having no reason to lie.

But tell us this – do you think Mr Coles’ reaction has been that of an innocent man? He was simply and politely asked to offer his side of the story and respond to a couple of very fair questions, and he’s reacted in just about the most unprofessional and childish manner possible short of shitting his pants and throwing his rattle out of the pram. Does it seem reasonable to you?

(I mean, for all the rest of us know that’s how he reacts when you forget to put sugar in his coffee at the office, so maybe it doesn’t seem unusual to you that he flies into a foaming-mouthed rage when someone asks him a straightforward and legitimate question.)

Or are you accusing Smart Furniture of stealing Benchmark Reviews’ work and lying about it? Because as we saw with the Guru3D business, that seems to be something that Benchmark Reviews gets pretty mad about, in which case you’d logically be grateful to us for pointing it out – not throwing the world’s greatest hissy fit, desperately trying to suppress all questions about the issue and breaking all sorts of laws by publishing my personal information on the internet.

Or is it just a pretty incredible coincidence that you both happened to write the exact same 3000 or so words about the same chair?

Oh, and I’d never “throw around accusations of plaigarism”, because as a professional journalist I know how to spell “plagiarism”. If you’re just “a humble programmer not a professional journalist”, why are you masquerading as the latter by writing reviews for a commercial website? Are you being paid? Because if you are, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you – you ARE a professional journalist, with all the responsibilities and obligations that position carries.

If you look at any of the reviews on the site (there are hundreds, pick one), you'll notice they follow a standardized format. They all have an "About [company name]" section typically filled with information from the company's web site. Now, I'm just a humble programmer, not a professional journalist, so perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking it would be pretty damn obvious that material in this section was in fact company propaganda and not written by the reviewer. Nonetheless Olin has told all his reviewers that this information will henceforth be italicized and attributed for the folks who really, really need a clue…such as– and I'm just picking an example off the top of my head here– people who throw around accusations of "plaigarism".
Your main beef appears to be that Olin liked his chair too much, leading him to write a review incorporating some Herman Miller claims and a general tone you thought too obsequious. Your privilege, I suppose…now could you please go bother someone else?